Search watoday:

Search in:

Why the Gonski reforms must be funded past 2017

David Gonski

David Gonski: "The importance of education must not be ignored." Photo: Jay Cronan

From personal experience, I know the importance of education must not be ignored or underestimated.

As proof, compare my grandfather’s lifetime suffering from not having proper schooling with the life and contribution of my father who received a full education and became a brain surgeon.

It was the realisation of how education helped my family as well as a knowledge of what education could do for the productivity of Australia that made me accept and feel privileged to chair the Review of Funding for Schooling.

Whether you agree or disagree with what we said, our recommendations started a discussion and, two years on, I think our analysis has stood up to scrutiny.

Advertisement

I remain proud of being involved and pleased I was given the opportunity to make a stand, not only to advocate the improvement of equity in education funding, but also to cultivate support for the benefits of education and how we should revere it and those who work in this sector.

We advocated a transparent method for determining funding based on aspirational educational outcomes (rather than last year’s costs) and recognising the importance of assisting those suffering from educational disadvantage with the suggestion of five disadvantaged groups with a need for funding loadings. We felt strongly that any funding system must ensure differences in educational outcomes were not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions.

The recommendations of the National Commission of Audit are disappointing in so far as they apply to school funding. While I am happy the commission specifically notes support for government investment in schooling, I am disappointed with their general commentary.

It is its view that increased funding does not necessarily equate to better school outcomes, basing this assertion on education funding increasing in real terms in Australia between 2000 and 2012, while results in international tests declined.

Both statements are true. Funding did increase and comparative results in PISA scores did decrease, however, the commission does not recognise there are many other reasons to explain this. Monies may have increased but not been given in the correct areas and other countries may have been more adept at where they put their money to improve their country’s scores.

The essence of what our review contended was that the way monies were applied was the important driver because increasing money where it counts was vital. The monies distributed over the 12-year period to which the commission refers are not applied on a needs-based aspirational system.

The commission believes our needs-based concepts are complex. I don’t agree. But even if they are, to reject an advance in effective distribution of monies merely because it is complex is too simplistic.

The commission suggests the states be given the task of disbursing funding to all schools, which means the commonwealth will effectively not participate in the distribution of the monies. Our suggestion was for states and the commonwealth to work together and, where useful, to use an independent body to make determinations that required independence from governments. We believed that states should operate their own systems but were aware that, if the states were asked to oversee the funding of the other systems on a day-to- day basis, two problems could occur.

First, those states would potentially be in a position of conflict. They would be operating their own systems and, at the same time, having to oversee distributions to competitors. While acknowledging the commission’s suggested safety mechanisms to overcome this problem, I doubt those safety mechanisms are sufficient nor seen to be so.

Second, leaving the entirety of a state’s education to a state leads to a situation of different educational systems with different aspirations and attributions in different parts of Australia. We felt this was undesirable. The multiplicity of funding systems in Australia when we did our review was to us an example of complexity where we believed uniformity was needed.

My biggest regret is that the commission also advocates that the funding of 2018 should be based on 2017 funding, indexed on changes in the CPI and the relevant wage-price index.

This means the concept of aspiration and need end in 2017 and, from then on, funding increases by indices not specifically related to changes in costs in education. If the funding is wrong in 2017, it will be perpetuated and, if circumstances and aspirations change after that date, they will presumably be irrelevant. No doubt this is simple but, like a lot that is simple, it is not adequate.

Given it is seeking to save monies for the commonwealth, I am surprised the commission doesn’t question one of the tenets we were given, namely that all schools should receive the same as what they were receiving per studentbefore our review. I suggest this as a richer vein for savings.

The budget pleasingly appears to have guaranteed the additional federal money agreed with the states to implement our suggested resourcing standard until 2017. Unfortunately, the budget papers suggest acceptance of the approach advocated by the commission that federal funding for school education should grow from 2017 in an amount equal to the changes in general inflation.

Based on what school education has done for my family, the benefits it can bring for individuals and our country as a whole and the reverence I feel for it having spent almost a year looking into it, I hope that, between now and 2017, the federal government will rethink this position and continue to fund a formula based on aspiration and need well past 2017.

David Gonski was chair of the Review of Funding for Schooling (known as the Gonski Review). This is an edited version of the Jean Blackburn Education Oration he delivered last night at the University of Melbourne.

61 comments so far

I was just wondering why all the private schools receive funding from the government.It hardly seems a fair system and such a waste of taxpayers money.The private schools are quite capable of supporting themselves.

Commenter

janine

Date and time

May 21, 2014, 11:04PM

Why make them more exclusive, so that only the wealthy can afford them? Why price out our freedom of choice? A private school student costs the Govt much less than a public school student.

Commenter

Kingstondude

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 4:28AM

Janine,

That’s easy. The Australian people have determined through the democratic electoral process to support private schools.

The state has an interest on the education of every child, no matter what school attended. It therefore funds the education of al children to some extent. The issue is not who owns the school or who operates the school, but how accessible the school is to students and what public purposes it serves. We happily pay government funds to private GPs via Medicare rebates because we understand that we are funding health. We don’t insist that those who go to a private GP pay the full cost because there is an alternative public hospital or community health centre that people can go to.

The claim that “private schools are quite capable of supporting themselves” is incorrect as most private schools charge low fees

Average public spending per student is $13,540 in government schools, $8938 in Catholic schools and $5893 in independent schools (Enrolments, funding and student staff ratios by sector, November 2011). Private fees lift the total amount spent per student in independent schools, but not in Catholic systemic schools, above that spent in government schools. But the averages conceal the different costs of students with different needs in each system; e.g., government schools have a higher percentage of disabled students than private schools, so their average cost should be higher.

The majority group of them has less. In 2010-11, the average net recurrent income per student was $10,334 in a Catholic school, $11,523 in a government school and $14,456 in an independent school (http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/schoolfunding).

These figures are not exactly comparable, but Catholic school fees seem to average around $2,000, while independent school fees seem to average around $8,000. No school could support itself on a fee of $2,000.

Commenter

Chris Curtis

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 5:57AM

Ever noticed that the people that have no idea about how to improve Australian educational outcomes always come back to MONEY. You see it is the easy option and when the standards keep going down you scream MORE MONEY. The FACT is Australia spends enough money in the public sector to have a world class system with worl class results. Also the international studies show that Australia has a high equity system, Mr Gonski forgets to piont that out as it would mess up his case for more money.so if anyone wants to know the real problems here are the top 3

1 Parents. how often do you think Australian parents sit down and read or do maths with their children

2 Teachers. how do we think that teachers who can bearly pass their HSC can instill knowledge into our children

3 System. Teachers run around preparing classes.My goodness in today age you think there would be a nice bank of prepared classes and the teachers could focus on the implementation.

But why don't we just take the easy option. MORE MONEY !

Commenter

abc

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 5:58AM

janine,

Private schools need money because they need it operate, without it the vast majority would close down and the students would be returned to the Government/Independent schools costing you many billions more in education expenses.

And in case you haven't noticed the Government Schools are increasingly becoming more Independent in nature, operating increasingly separately from the centralised Government Education System and with an ever increasing number charging fees. In fact many of these Independent Government Schools have almost all the characteristics of the Private Schools you so despise. Yet you are happy to give the Independent Government Schools, including those in wealthy suburbs, all the money they need and deny any money to the struggling Private School, where the parents struggle to make ends met to give their children a decent education.

Commenter

Funding Debate

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 6:56AM

Gonski almost fits a lobbyist category and has questionable business interests. I do not think one man alone should have so much power or say over our total education system and is being given too much weight. I also think PUP is wise by electing any funding for education goes direct to schools and not to the states to be bled. and interesting the governments retirement fund called the future fund with over $100 billion in it, has on record, large sums taken out of heath and education and placed into this fund with no valid reason to be doing so, almost an embezzlement.

Commenter

Brian Woods

Location

Glenroy

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 7:45AM

Private schools should not be getting one red cent of public money.Those that want to send their precious Sebastians and Olivias to exclusive schools can choose to do so but they must pay entirely. If public funding is removed from these so called private schools there will be no "exodus" of these little dahlings to the public system because their parents think it is not good enough for them, the majority will stay put.The same goes for anyone wanting a religious education for their children.This is a secular country(or was until a catholic cabal was fraudulently installed into government)The money, $5billion per year and rising - untouched by sweaty joe's "heavy lifting" budget, should be ploughed back in to the public system where it is badly needed and where it will do the most good for the benefit of all, by providing a robust education for all.No other country has such an inequitable quotient of public funding directed toward elite and religious schools. This current funding model has given no commensurate lift in educational outcomes,is obscenely inequitable and totally unnecessary.It is the public subsidizing social stratification .

Commenter

nkelly

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 7:52AM

How are some people so ignorant. Private schools take a massive burden off the state system. If everyone in the private sector suddenly returned to the state system it would cost billions more. The reason the private sector is growing is because of the appalling standards in so many public schools these days. Many people struggle to send their children to a private school just to give them a chance.

Commenter

haggis

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 8:21AM

Chris Curtis,

The Australian people had nothing to do with that decision. It was made by politicians manipulating the political process and no government has been prepared since to reverse a decision that the bulk of Australians do not support.

Commenter

Lesm

Location

Balmain

Date and time

May 22, 2014, 8:26AM

I completely agree Janine, It's amazing to me that government funding of private schools doesn't get more attention as a massive area of inequality. In effect that funding is provided without any means testing and yet means testing has become (quite rightly) a core element of government funding in most areas. So someone earning $500k pa gets full subsidy for their child with no means test, extraordinary. The only fair way to do it would be to remove direct funding and make fees tax deductible, then means test the deduction.